


Heroes

by gaps42



Series: Learning [4]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Best Friends in Love, Canon Compliant, F/F, SO HOW ABOUT THAT TRAILER ELMAX FANDOM, part of my Learning series but it's canon so you don't have to read the others, shamelessly soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 19:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18224741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaps42/pseuds/gaps42
Summary: Max is always trying to help El learn new things about the real world, but El somehow ends up showing her something that's been with her all along.Pre "How to Fly," but inspired by the elmax scenes in the trailer.





	Heroes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gayforjane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayforjane/gifts).



> you know when you're already in love with your best friend but you haven't put words to it yet inside your own head so you're acting like you're dating and feeling all the things that come with loving someone without putting the romantic love label on the feelings like if you don't use the word it won't count??? that's what season three elmax friendship looks like alskhdjslfh;gf

El's foot keeps up its loyal tapping to the beat of the top 40 hit on the tinny radio even as she sighs wistfully. “I wish my hair was long like yours.”

Max has to force herself not to wince. She still doesn't know the whole story of El's experiences growing up in the lab – no one truly does, since El is not exactly the most verbose or forthcoming person in the world, although Lucas insists she's improved leaps and bounds since the boys had first found her in the rain – but she's sussed out enough to know that there are some basic childhood things even Chief Hopper and their friends can't fix for El, no matter how much they want to. “Yours is growing really fast,” she points out, trying to put a smile into her voice since she can't turn to let El see it with the other girl's hands still in her hair. “And it looks awesome the length that it is. You have really nice hair.”

“Pretty?” El murmurs, so quietly Max almost wouldn't be able to hear her if El weren't practically wrapped around her back as she braids and unbraids her red waves. One of El's demurely-folded legs frames Max's hip from behind, and the other has lolled carelessly off of the edge of the bed they're perched on, bare foot tapping along with the music on her worn bedroom carpet. Max isn't entirely sure how El is managing to brush and plait her hair over Max's back with barely a breath of space between their bodies, but she's certainly not going to be the one to move first.

“Really pretty,” Max emphasizes, and her heart has a heady moment of weightlessness in her chest when El hums happily and wiggles her freshly-pedicured toes against the carpet. El is still learning what words to use to express her feelings, so Max has been studying her unconscious cues, her body language and the expressions and noises she makes when she's not thinking too hard about how other people want her to react. Max likes to think she's become a sort of expert on reading El, understanding her nonverbal cues so well that she can read her friend without even looking at her now, and the knowledge feels as intimate as El's warm body pressed against her back. The thought makes Max's own toes, the skin as colorful as the nails from El's first ever attempt at nail polish, curl in the carpet, too, and she's grateful that her friend can't see her goofy smile spread over her face before she manages to bite it down.

“I liked the nursery rhymes about princesses,” El says softly. Everything about her is soft, Max is discovering; her voice, her hands in Max's hair as they glide through the now undoubtedly-knotted waves for the thousandth time, her expressions when she's with her found family and she forgets to be frightened, the way her body has started to gravitate towards Max's whenever they're together like she's silently trying to figure out how much of herself she can wrap around the redhead without having to stop whatever task she's doing. As much as she admires the immense power and strength she knows El is capable of, Max is in awe of this softness, each gentle stroke of her fingers sending shivers of electricity through Max completely separate from her powers.

Max is brought back to herself when El continues in her soft voice, “Papa read them to me when I was really little, as a reward. Not like Hopper does now. But the princesses were all loved, and pretty, with long hair. Like you.”

With El practically wrapped around her, Max wonders if her friend can feel the warmth of her blush radiating from her skin even without being able to see her face, at the implication that El thinks she is pretty. “You don't need long hair to be pretty, or loved. That's just one kind of girl. There's a lot of different kinds of girls in the world. If you want to grow your hair you should, but you're just as pretty with short hair as with long hair.”

“Me?” El murmurs, the hands gliding through Max's frizzing waves as reverent as her voice.

“And every other girl,” Max adds hastily, that familiar and unnamed guilt gripping her belly as she curses herself for her slip. “And being pretty isn't that important, anyway. Fairy tales overemphasize beauty as importance for female characters. If those are the only stories you grew up with, I get why you'd focus on that, but it's only one _kind_ of character. I always liked the brave knights having adventures in those stories, for example. I know they weren't usually girls, but I always liked pretending they were, and play-acting as if I were them, instead of the princesses.”

“Yes, you are the brave hero,” El says quietly, and there's so much affection in her voice, like she could possibly see Max as anything close to the hero of any story – or, Max's brain supplies dangerously, her own - that Max flushes with her whole body and scrambles to find any way to negate the pressure of her words that are suddenly sitting on her chest so heavily she has a hard time finding her breath.

“Not that I can talk about being brave or heroic to _you_ , obviously,” she blurts out hurriedly, twisting on the bed to smile at El over her shoulder before she can think better of it, or think at all, which seems to be becoming a byproduct of spending time with El. “You're already way cooler than all those story-book heroes, with your powers and everything.”

El smiles at her. Her hands haven't ceased their gentle rhythm in Max's hair, even with Max's awkward repositioning, and Max's heart picks up in a rhythm that's anything but gentle under her soft gaze. “Cool,” El repeats, and nods, like they've made an important decision. “You're cool, too.”

Max grins, helplessly; a beat too late she thinks of turning back around so that El won't see her cheeks flush, but El has already seen her blush far too many times in their few short months of friendship, and with those soft, earnest eyes so close she isn't quite sure she'll be able to turn around without toppling off the edge of the bed. “We are both pretty cool,” she agrees, and her heart flutters giddily when she feels the vibration of El's snicker against her back.

“And pretty,” El points out, soft eyes dropping Max's to watch her own fingers glide wistfully through Max's hair.

The warmth which rushes through Max's body is cooled so quickly by the familiar guilt wrapping around her vocal chords like a vice under El's soft, trusting gaze that she has to clear her throat a few times before she dares to speak. “Yeah, who needs story-book knights, huh? We've got it all covered,” she jokes, and hides her wince inside another indelicate cough behind one fist.

But El nods, and just like that the nameless guilt melts away and they smile at each other with a new kind of unnamed feeling, as soft and warm and constant as the rhythm of El's fingers through Max's hair.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i always wondered where the "pretty" thing came from so i made up my own explanation from that one line about reading nursery rhymes Dr. Brenner has in season one alsdjshdj;hg this is just a short thing to get me back into writing so hopefully this is the beginning of me spamming the elmax tag again!!! i miss these gays<3


End file.
